On 6/21/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
My sense is that the number of articles created by unknown people is about the same, but that they now sign up for an account first. This is not helpful, because whereas before we had the rough indicator of "ip number equals newbie" (imperfect), we now have less of an indicator.
In addition, a pseudonym is more anonymous than an IP address. Before, it was possible to tell that user X came from school network Y. Now you have to do a CheckUser to get the user's IP. The Seigenthaler vandal was identified because he was an unregistered user.
GerardM also has some great ideas how we can build better authentication into our software, so that, for instance, we know that certain IP addresses are untrusted, and instead of blocking them entirely, we allow users who are authenticated _within_ a school or university to use that authentication in Wikipedia.
What I would prefer to see, in the long run, is a replacement of locking and controls by flagging and visibility. This is core to what I think works: not gatekeeping, but accountability.
Absolutely. My long-term vision of a replacement for both protection and semi-protection is "quality protection", where the version you see is the last reviewed one, but the article remains fully editable. Following this strategy, we can make Wikipedia ever more openly editable, continuing the path we have already taken.
Erik